1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to audio menu navigation, and, more particularly, to audio menu navigation when using headphones.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the number of audio sources available in today's multimedia systems increasing rapidly, the number of source based selection options in cars is also increasing. At the present time, some of the source selection options in the car audio applications in the case of rear seat audio applications include the following sources: XM or Sirius (satellite audio), CD, DVD, AM or FM, AUX, Phone, Onstar (U.S. market segment only), USB, High Definition Radio (U.S. market segment only) and DAB (European market segment only).
Currently there is no known innovative system that enables a savvy user to make selections of audio sources more efficiently. A bridge between better human factor engineering and the source selection has not yet arrived to make the navigation easier within and across the navigation sources for the end user.
Consider the case of a single source with USB. Music navigation through the USB flash drive source for example requires the user to be able to traverse one song at a time for the user to decide which song he would like to select. This is a rather cumbersome process, especially with compressed audio wherein the songs can number over one hundred depending on the flash storage content within the USB drive.
Accordingly, what is neither anticipated nor obvious in view of the prior art is a method of enabling a user to more efficiently navigate menus in applications having more than one audio source.